Automated time and attendance systems have become increasingly popular for collection of time sheet data for payroll processing. Improvements in the payroll processing systems permit management with the information necessary to devise more effective schedule and programs to control or reduce wages, salaries and fringe benefits. Such systems are typically incorporated into a mainframe computer having the storage and procession capability to manage large amount of data.
A problem with the prior art revolves around the inputing and presentation of information. Computer programs of the prior art typically employ a video display scheme that produces rectangular images through which the computer program and the user communicate. Such a rectangular image, commonly known as a window, is the video display manifestation of the program's current input/output data exchange with the user. All of the computer program's interaction with the user occurs through this kind of user interface relying on multiple, often overlapping, windows. Each window is the visual aspect of a particular user interface context. To properly handle the sequencing of user interface contexts as windows are created and destroyed the program must manage numerous processing control elements. These processing control elements define the program's processing states for active and pending user interface contexts represented by windows on the display screen.
The task of sequencing user interface contexts minimally requires that the processing control elements handle operations in two functional categories--the video display and user input. The video display handling is required to maintain window images which correspond to user interface contexts without incurring unsightly side effects or inconvenient delays. Likewise, the user input must be received and interpreted in correspondence with a particular user interface context. Doing this efficiently when multiple user interface contexts are layered upon one another requires complex and sophisticated processing control operations.
CICS, the Customer Information Communications System, is an IBM software product which allows terminal users to access mainframe programs for on-line transaction processing. Prior to its introduction in 1969, batch data processing was used for transaction processing. CICS has since become the standard facility through which on-line processing occurs for mainframes. CICS is the software interface between the mainframe data processing application program and a user's terminal, such as an IBM 3270. CICS is primarily concerned with managing the flow of data streams between the mainframe application program and the user's terminal. A crucial facet of the data stream management is formatting the data as it appears to the user on the terminal.
The customary manner of presenting multiple user interface contexts in a CICS computer program does not include any form of windowing. A CICS program requires clearing the display screen while making a transition from one user interface display to another. No more than one user interface context is ever visible. Also in a CICS program, the video screen arrangement and the related user input fields for a particular user interface context are defined together as an integral unit. These discrete user interface context definitions are the fundamental units upon which a windowing scheme must be devised for CICS programs. To implement in a CICS program such a windowing scheme capable of displaying the multilayered presentation of windows representing a cascade of user interface contexts requires special synchronization of the data streams between the application program and the user's terminal. The program's processing control elements provide the user interface context sequencing to perform this synchronization. Also needed are special video display design techniques to overcome the intrinsic limitations of CICS display capabilities.
Most of the contemporary computer user interfaces include some form of windowing. The expansive acceptance of products like Microsoft's WINDOWS (tm) and the Common User Access (CUA) user interface design standard developed by IBM attest to the need for computer program windowing capabilities. Yet CICS, itself, lacks any facility to directly provide windowing within a computer program operating on a personal computer or intelligent work station. CICS, though, is in use on a vast number of personal computers and intelligent work stations to support the on-line transaction processing needs of businesses around the world.
Thus what is lacking in the art is the ability to synchronize CICS data streams with a sequence of user interface contexts and the appropriate video display design techniques to accomplish windowing.